Psychohistorian

Karma: 3,414

Psychohistorian 5 Apr 2009 18:18 UTC
8 points
in reply to: Marshall’s comment on: Why Support the Underdog?
He didn’t give you his word that you are wrong. He stated that your claim was not rigorous and that crucial parts of it required supporting evidence that you failed to provide.

He also claimed that you do not understand evolutionary psychology. (Edit) You have provided no evidence to dispute this claim. Of course you are probably not making an evpsych argument, so this comment is probably not necessary, but if it’s wrong and you are, you might consider rebutting it.

Rational responses to this would include providing evidence in support of your claim or explaining how a this predisposition might form. “Maybe we just don’t like overdogs” explains exactly nothing, except that we don’t like overdogs, which has already been stated.

Conversations are important, but making statements with no evidenciary claim and, well, no claim that adds meaning, are not.

Psychohistorian 5 Apr 2009 18:48 UTC
9 points
on: Why Support the Underdog?
I’m not sure the evidence of the proposed bias supports the type of ev-psych responses being offered.

The only cases I’m aware of underdog bias actually mattering are of the Israel-Palestine type, not the Zug-Urk type. I-P poses no significant costs or benefit to the individual. Z-U poses tremendous costs or benefits to the individual. I don’t imagine I-P type support decisions meaningfully affect reproductive success. Unless there’s evidence that people still side with the underdog when it really costs them something, these ev-psych explanations seem to be explaining something that doesn’t happen.

I would posit that it’s cultural, and it’s fictional availability bias. In all of our stories, the underdog is invariably the good guy. It seems very difficult to tell a story about good giant multinational corporation beats evil little old lady. The reverse has been quite successful. Consequently, we tend to side with the underdog because we generalize from a great deal of fictional evidence that “proves” that the underdog is the good guy. This also explains why we stick with an underdog even when he ceases to be an underdog, as this is a typical pivot point in a story.

This raises the question of why this kind of story is so successful, which I admit I don’t have a great answer to.

Psychohistorian 6 Apr 2009 20:59 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Jack’s comment on: Why Support the Underdog?
Not really. ’Why does “underdog beats overdog” make a more interesting story that “overdog beats underdog” ‘is a very different question from ‘Why do we tend to side with the underdog when no costs are imposed on us?’

Providing an alternative mechanism but not being able to fully explain its causes is hardly begging the question.

Psychohistorian 6 Apr 2009 21:20 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Supporting the underdog is explained by Hanson’s Near/Far distinction
The original poster here seemed to basically be saying “This is a minor effect of such complexity that it could be entirely the result of selective pressures on other parts of human psychology, which give us this predisposition.” This seems highly plausible, given that I don’t think anyone has come up with a story of how decisions in this circumstance influence differential selective pressure. It seems that if you can’t find a reasonably clear mechanism for differntial reproductive success, you should not bend over backwards to do so (that is, if it’s that hard to find one, maybe it’s because it isn’t there).

My personal theory is that it stems from story telling and thus availability bias. Almost no story has the overdog as a good guy. This is probably the result of a story requiring conflict to occur in a non-predictable manner. Big, good guy crushes bad, little guy with little resistance is too foregone of a conclusion. Thus, every story we hear, we like the good guy. When we hear a story about Israel-Palestine (that happens to represent reality, roughly), we side with the little guy because, based on a massive compilation of (fictional) “evidence,” the little guy is always right.

Of course, explaining the psychology of good stories is rather difficult; still, “side effect of other aspect of human psychology” seems more accurate than “result of differential reproduction” for something this specific, abstract, and practically useless. Though, of course, if someone comes up with a convincing mechanism for differential reproductive success, that would probably change my mind.

Psychohistorian 8 Apr 2009 22:38 UTC
3 points
on: Help, help, I’m being oppressed!
I believe there’s another feature, though it admittedly might fold into (2). It’s:

-Mutual Underdog status is necessary for inspiring group cooperation without necessitating payment or reciprocity.

As a member of group A, I see myself as persecuted. If a member of group B wants me to join his] group without actually helping me, he must prove that he too is an underdog. Otherwise, if he had power, I should reasonably expect him to actually help me before joining his group. But if he’s an underdog who’s about to have power (with my help, of course), then I should help him even though he hasn’t actually done anything for me.

Similarly, given that I’m the underdog, if you’re in charge, it’s (at least indirectly) your fault that I’m oppressed. Thus, if you convince me you aren’t in charge, it makes you not responsible for my underdog status.

Also, on an amusing note, I was fairly sure these were all from the US, until I read about the “incursion of Sharia ” and thought, “That can’t be from the States!.” Thank you, Mr. Santorum, for proving me wrong.

Psychohistorian 10 Apr 2009 16:43 UTC
1 point
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Silver Chairs, Paternalism, and Akrasia
Akrasia, both the term and its first instance, are from Plato (Wikipedia backs me up on this ;) ).

Wikipedia’s summary is clearer, if less true to the text, than the one I wrote, so, basically, Plato says akrasia is impossible because: “A person never chooses to act poorly or against his better judgment; actions that go against what is best are only a product of being ignorant of facts or knowledge of what is best or good.”

As for the weight loss thing, very few people desire “losing weight”; they desire “being fit” or “looking good.” “Losing weight” is merely a means to those ends. It would be like saying you desire going to the dentist; almost no one wants to go to the dentist, but they do want to have good teeth, and it’s necessary to that end. If you look at the problem this way, it makes more sense, though I agree that eating the cheesecake is not necessarily akratic.

Psychohistorian 10 Apr 2009 17:44 UTC
0 points
on: Silver Chairs, Paternalism, and Akrasia
Your proposition is: “Utils come from you doing what you want, not being happy or successful, therefore, forcing people to do something they do not directly want to do is necessarily bad for their utility.” This claim appears to contradict reality, or else it redifines utility into something new and quite different.

A necessary implication of this view would be that, given the constraints they faced, everyone is at their maximum possible utility, i.e. there is no choice that you (or anyone) would go back and change. Period. Full stop. Nothing you could have done would make your utility higher than it is.

This may be true for you personally, but I sincerely doubt that. Indeed, I doubt it’s true for anyone with a working long-term memory. Thus, your definition is either empirically false or it redefines utility into something unrecognizable.

As your premise is false, the conclusion is trivial and unsupported.

Of course, if I misunderstand you, or if this theory can be supported by a true premise with a conventional concept of utility, please do so; the general idea is interesting and the post is certainly thought-provoking.

Couple defenses/explanations for the “Your utility is already maximized” conclusion: -Coercion: changing facts about choices (i.e. removing coercion) might increase your utility, but, if you can’t change the constraints you faced, you would not have changed a single decision.) -Information: One could argue you’d now change your choice due to better information. But if better information would increase your utility, then your utility stemmed from the consequences of your decision, not your making the decision itself, thus falsifying the original proposition. -Unconsidered alternatives—it is possible that your utility would be higher if you had realized an alternative choice that never came to mind. Thus, all decisions you made you chose the best of the options you considered; were you aware of more options, you might have actually done better. It’s unclear from the phrasing of this proposition if this would count as utility increasing. Nevertheless, I doubt there’s anyone who does not think his utility would be higher had he made a different choice that had come to mind at the time.

Psychohistorian 10 Apr 2009 22:05 UTC
0 points
on: Akrasia and Shangri-La
How does one reject the hypothesis “You’re failing because you aren’t trying hard enough / you’re doing it wrong?”

In the case of the Shangri-la bit, it obviously works, but in the “eat less, excersize more” diet, how can one conclude that the failing is in the strategy and not the user?

I’m not trying to say you’re wrong; I’m genuinely curious as to how one can decide this approach fails.

Psychohistorian 16 Apr 2009 22:24 UTC
6 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: GroupThink, Theism … and the Wiki
If you think about it, the argument from evil is more of a problem with the cogency of a concept of God.

If I invented malaria in a laboratory and released it on the world, the only difficult moral question is what way of killing me wouldn’t be too nice.

God does the exact same thing (under a creationist model) and he is still considered, “good.” Thus, either we infer that I’m morally entitled to kill millions of people, or that when we say God is “good,” we literally have no idea what we mean by it.

And for the idea of the devil created disease, or some other such cop-out, the issue is that God allows its continued existence, which would imply that the relief of suffering caused by others is not a good thing, since if it were a good thing, God would do it.

Then again, I doubt many theists think about having a cogent concept of God.

Psychohistorian 18 Apr 2009 23:00 UTC
1 point
on: Atheist or Agnostic?
The problem is that the term “atheist” has a rich history as a pejorative. Atheists were not looked on kindly. Most people who were actually willing to brand themselves with a pejorative were probably quite antireligious. People who weren’t antireligious weren’t willing to brand themselves with a pejorative, so they co-opted the word “agnostic” and used it to describe them.

I know a number of atheists who call themselves agnostics, and it’s clear to me that the only reason is that they have a negative view of what an athiest is and do not want to associate themselves with Hitchens-like antireligiousity.

All atheist means is “not a theist.” Anyone who lacks an affirmative belief in god is an atheist. That includes, for example, newborns. People are highly resistant to this definition, because if “atheist” is a dirty word, you hardly want to admit that you or your child started out as one.

In the case of your hypothetical woman, wouldn’t it follow that someone who is not 100% sure that they have chosen the right religion is also “agnostic?” Many people have some serious problems understanding the importance (or lack thereof) of certainty in belief systems.

Psychohistorian 18 Apr 2009 23:01 UTC
2 points
in reply to: byrnema’s comment on: Rationality Quotes—April 2009
“Agnostic,” as used here and as criticized by Adams, is most often a weasel word used by atheists who believe atheism necessarily requires a god-hating, Hitchens-esque attitude towards religion and do not identify with that, or who are afraid to admit to their atheism for social reasons, or out of fear that they are wrong and god will punish them (and that calling themselves “agnostics” instead of “atheists” will somehow prevent god from punishing them, the absurdity of which is Adam’s point, obviously.

Interestingly, this is not the original meaning of agnostic. A “gnostic” believes that the question “Is there a god?” is discoverable or knowable. An “agnostic” believes that it is unknowable or undiscoverable. Thus, an agnostic atheist is one who does not believe there is a god and believes we can never (fundamentally, not just practically) know if there is one or not. The person you would describe is just an atheist, and probably a gnostic one.

I think the vast majority of the atheists in this community believe they could be wrong, they just assign a very, very low probability to it, particularly with respect to certain specifications of god.

Psychohistorian 18 Apr 2009 23:15 UTC
0 points
on: My main problem with utilitarianism

But my main problem is that there’s very little evidence getting utilons is actually increasing anybody’s happiness significantly.

If you give someone more utilons, and they do not get happier, you’re doing it wrong by definition. Conversely, someone cannot get happier without acquiring more utilons by definition.

You’ve rejected a straw man. You’re probably right to reject said straw man, but it doesn’t relate to utilitarianism.

Psychohistorian 19 Apr 2009 17:46 UTC
0 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: My main problem with utilitarianism
My understanding of utilitarian theory is that, at the highest meta level, every utilitarian theory is unified by the central goal of maximizing happiness, though the definitions, priorities, and rules may vary.

If this is true, “Utilitarianism fails to maximize happiness” is an illegitimate criticism of the meta-theory. It would be saying, “Maximizing happiness fails to maximize happiness,” which is definitionally impossible.

Since the meta-theory is “Maximize happiness,” you can’t say that the meta-theory fails to maximize happiness, only that specific formulations do, which is absolutely legitimate. The original author appears to be criticizing a specific formulation while he claims to be criticizing the meta-theory. That was my original point, and I did not make it clearly enough.

I used “by definition” precisely because I had just read that article. I’m clearly wrong because apparently the definition of utilons is controversial. I simply think of them as a convenient measurement device for happiness. If you have more utilons, you’re that much happier, and if you have fewer, you’re that much less happy. If buying that new car doesn’t increase your happiness, you derive zero utilons from it.

To my knowledge, that’s a legitimate and often-used definition of utilon. I could be wrong, in which case my definition is wrong, but given the fact that another poster takes issue with your definition, and that the original poster implicitly uses yet another definition, I really don’t think mine can be described as “wrong.” Though, of course, my original assertion that the OP is wrong by definition is wrong.

Psychohistorian 19 Apr 2009 18:36 UTC
0 points
in reply to: whpearson’s comment on: Atheist or Agnostic?
Beyond the problem of complete acceptance, I have yet to find a definition of God that is not:
1. Obviously empirically false (e.g. omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and nothing else) or
2. Incoherent - (e.g. omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and some fourth property that we cannot possibly fathom that supercedes the other thre, i.e. we literally have no idea what He is)
Most definitions of god involve a lot of hand-waving, to the point at which you don’t actually know what you mean when you say “I believe in God.”

This is the main reason I do not associate atheism with an affirmative belief in non-existence. “I do not believe bleggs exist” is not a reasonable statement unless you can reasonably define bleggs.

“Any agent with supernatural powers who is responsible for the creation of the universe and/or mankind, who is ontologically superior to mankind” seems like a fairly catch-all definition of God (as opposed to god(s), which could be somewhat different). Admittedly, there’s some hand-waving in “ontologically superior,” but I think this definition is pretty effective. Admittedly I know little about Eastern religion, so I may be missing something big. I’m not attached to that definition at all and would love to see a better one if someone has one.

Psychohistorian 19 Apr 2009 18:52 UTC
1 point
in reply to: whpearson’s comment on: Atheist or Agnostic?

Specifically if you allow God to mean an agent that created the visible universe rather than a process, then I have no evidence for or against either hypothesis.

If you are given a hypothesis “X exists” and you have no evidence for that hypothesis, the rational conclusion is to not believe X exists (which is very different from believing “x does not exist”). The fact that you have no evidence against is not particularly relevant; there are an arbitrarily large (if not infinite) number of existential propositions for which you have no evidence against them.

More succinctly, if you have no evidence for or against a particular existential proposition, you are (or should be) an “atheist” with respect to that proposition.

If I’ve made a mistake in my reasoning/epistemology, please correct me. I’d like to make an actual independent post on the issue of not believing versus believing not, but I’m pretty sure I’m a karma point short.

Psychohistorian 19 Apr 2009 21:45 UTC
0 points
in reply to: byrnema’s comment on: Atheist or Agnostic?
Basically. If you had a god that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good/benevolent, and has absolutely no other characteristics governing his behaviour, you’d expect to live in a much, much nicer world than you actually do.

Most of the responses to this problem postulate that god has some other set of goals in addition to these four, i.e. he wants to reward the faithful, or he wants to ensure free will, or something like that. These responses generally succeed only by making the concept of god so muddy that you don’t know what you believe in, i.e. He’s all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, except for whenever he’s not. More explicit point here.

Psychohistorian 19 Apr 2009 22:16 UTC
4 points
on: The True Epistemic Prisoner’s Dilemma

And then—I hope—you would cooperate.

Why do you hope I’d let a billion people die (from a proposed quantification in another comment)?

This is actually rather different from a classic PD, to the extent that Cooperate (cooperate) is not the collectively desirable outcome.

Payoffs: You(Creationist): Defect(D): 1 Billion live D(C): 3 Billion live C(D): 0 live C(C): 2 Billion live

Under the traditional PD, D(C) is best for you, but worst for him. Under this PD, D(C) is best for both of you. He wants you to defect and he wants to cooperate; he just doesn’t know it. Valuing his utility does not save this like it does the traditional PD. Assuming he’s vaguely rational, he will end up happier if you choose to defect, regardless of his choice. Furthermore, he thinks you will be happier if he defects, so he has absolutely no reason to cooperate.

If only by cooperating can you guarantee his cooperation, you should do so. However the PD generally assumes such prior commitments are not possible. And unlike the traditional PD, C(C) does not lead to the best possible collective outcome. Thus, you should try your hardest to convince him to cooperate, then you should defect. He’ll thank you for it when another billion people don’t die.

The medical situation is more confusing because I don’t think it’s realistic. I sincerely doubt you would have two vaguely rational doctors who would both put 99% confidence on a diagnosis knowing that another doctor was at least 99% confident that that diagnosis was incorrect. Thus, you should both amend your estimates substantially downwards, and thus should probably cooperate. If you take the hypothetical at face value, it seems like you both should defect, even though again D(C) would be the optimal solution from your perspective.

The real problem I’m having with some of these comments is that they assume my decision to defect or cooperate affects his decision, which does not seem to be a part of the hypothetical. Frankly I don’t see how people can come to this conclusion in this context, given that it’s a 1-shot game with a different collective payoff matrix than the traditional PD.

Psychohistorian 20 Apr 2009 15:34 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: The Sin of Underconfidence
The anthropic principle does technically work, but it admittedly feels like a cheat and I’d expect most audiences not familiar with it already would consider it such.

It’s not a knock-down counterargument, but it seems to me we don’t know enough about physics to say it’s actually possible that the universe could be fine-tuned differently. Sure, we can look at a lot of fundamental constants and say, “If that one were different by 1 unit, fusion wouldn’t occur,” but we don’t know if they are interconnected, and I don’t think we can accurate model what would occur, so it’s possible that it couldn’t be different, that other constants would vary with it, and/or that it would make a universe so entirely different from our own that we have no idea what it would be like, so it’s quite possible it could support life of some form.

Or, reduced into something more succinct, we don’t actually know what the universe would look like if we changed fundamental constants (if this is even possible) because the results are beyond our ability to model, so it’s quite possible that most possible configurations would support some form of life.

Multiverse works too, but again feels like cheating. I also admit there may be facts that undermine this, I’m not super-familiar with the necessary physics.

Masochism vs. Self-defeat

Psychohistorian20 Apr 2009 21:20 UTC

2 points

10 comments2 min readLW link

Psychohistorian 21 Apr 2009 20:06 UTC
2 points
in reply to: pjeby’s comment on: Masochism vs. Self-defeat
A reason in this case would simply mean a cause, and I don’t think I said anything to indicate otherwise. “People undermine themselves because they have experienced reinforcement as a result of similar behaviour in the past” would clearly count as a reason.

“Remove” would not be grammatical, if you look at what “it’s” stands in for. All I’m saying is that we want to avoid self defeating behaviour; I’m not saying anything about how we should go about doing it, which seems to be your objection.

On a more general note, I seem to have confused the whole issue due to language problems, which was ironically my point. If you genuinely like losing, there’s no reason to fight off Bruce, and your behaviour is masochistic and not necessarily improvable. If you prefer winning, but are undermining your own efforts, that is an entirely separate deal. That was most of my point.